


No Sick Days for Directors

by misc



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Sick Phil Coulson, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2516789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misc/pseuds/misc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson is sick. The team shows support and love in different ways.<br/>Takes place on the bus, immediately after and containing spoilers for S2, Episode 6 (A Hen in the Wolf House)</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Sick Days for Directors

As soon as Agent May left, Coulson plopped down in his desk chair and allowed his head to loll forward into his hands. He hadn’t gotten more than five hours of sleep in… three days? four? By this point it seemed pointless to try and count. His skin felt warm under his own palms and he swallowed hard in the thousandth attempt to push away that burning feeling that had been growing over the course of the very long day. Coulson knew himself pretty well, and however rarely it happened, he knew when he was getting sick. S.H.I.E.L.D took any sort of illness in an agent pretty seriously, demanding sick leave and occasionally quarantine to prevent organization-wide outbreaks, but old S.H.I.E.L.D medical practices were the last thing on the new director’s mind. Besides, he was the director now, so he got to make the rules, and the rule was ‘no sick days for the director.’ Coulson coughed within the confines if his mouth to try and alleviate the tickle, but it just seemed to make it worse. He sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and returned to his work.

\---t w o d a y s l a t e r-- 

Coulson couldn’t sleep, for a change. His bed was hot, his skin was cold, and he regularly lost his ability to breathe out of one nostril or the other. After trying for almost four hours, he rolled over, flipped on the light and slipped a slender knife from under his mattress. Almost without looking, he began to carve into the wall next to the window, the series of circles and lines seeming to cut into his pounding head as easily as they cut into the walls. Without even noticing, three hours had passed, his head was killing him, and his nose had started to run. There was a knock on the door and he spun around almost comically. 

“Who is it?” His voice came out almost as whisper and before he could clear his throat and try again, the door had opened. He wondered if Melinda May every changed her clothes. She stood above him in her black v-neck and tight black pants as he sat on the bed in his pajamas like a child. 

“I could hear scratching.” Her voice was cold and even, but without the words or the tone, he could detect that hint of worry that she seemed to save just for him. 

“Couldn’t sleep.” He responded, voice still sounding like sandpaper. He cleared his throat subtly, embarrassed and angry that his vocal cords had betrayed him so blatantly. 

She raised her eyebrows, “You need to be getting more sleep.” She responded. “The team can’t afford to have you compromised.” 

“I’m not compromised. I’m just awake.” He responded, pressing his wrist to the underside of his nose and quietly slipping the blade back under the bed. 

May sighed and placed a hand on her hip, “How’re you feeling?” She asked, tastefully probing director’s obviously deteriorated condition. 

“Fine. Great.” Her gaze didn’t change, Coulson was too tired to maintain his façade, and he really had to cough. He did so, rubbed his eyes, and spoke again “Okay, so I’m the tiniest bit under the weather. It’s no big deal. I’ll be totally fine by tomorrow.” His voice cracked on the last syllable and he closed his eyes. He was starting to feel nauseous, and all he wanted to do all of a sudden was lay down. But May was still standing over him, unmoving. “Please don’t tell the rest of the team. They need to be focused on their work.” 

“Do you promise to rest tomorrow? All day?” 

That was sounding pretty good right now, so it was easy for Coulson to weekly nod his reply, clenching his teeth to suppress the waves of nausea that were becoming increasingly worse. 

“I’ll keep the team out of your hair. You just focus on getting better.” 

There was an obvious note of warmth in her tone, but he couldn’t acknowledge it before jolting to his feat and practically sprinting to the bathroom. When he returned, pale and sweating almost half an hour later, the lights in his sleeping quarters had been dimmed, and on his bedside table was a bottle of water, two pain pills and a box of tissues. The blankets he had kicked off the bed were pulled up and ready. Smiling softly to himself, he was dozing fitfully almost the moment his head hit the pillow. 

\---- 

Skye was annoyed. Of all the days for Coulson to decide that he needed to stay locked in his room in order to work, of course it would be the day that he had promised to have a good conversation with her about the very large problem that was the fact that she was quite possibly an alien life form. “It doesn’t even make sense!” She complained to a politely nodding Agent Triplett, throwing her hands up and almost jolting her laptop on to the floor. “Like, what sudden, new work could he possibly have that is so important that he can’t even spare ten minutes talk to me?” 

Triplett shrugged. “It’s definitely strange. I haven’t seen him at all today. This plane is big, but it isn’t huge.” 

“So what, he’s hiding?” 

Triplett just shrugged again, obviously distracted by the large screen that was scrolling through a huge data base to try and find a face match for some new possible threat. Sky sighed and set her computer aside and hopped down from the counter she was sitting on. “Whatever. I’m gonna go find him.” 

\---- 

Coulson’s sleeping quarter on the bus was the largest out of all the closet-sized bedrooms, and it was also the most secluded, farthest away from the lounge and around a corner. Skye knocked impatiently for the third time, and was answered by a startled grunt. 

“May?” 

“Uh, no. It’s Skye. You said we could talk today…?” 

There was no response, except for a muttered curse word. And then, “Yeah, can we postpone that? I’ve just got a… a lot of work here.” 

Skye huffed in annoyance. “It’ll just take a few minutes. Please? You kind of dropped a bomb on me with that whole ‘you’re an alien’ thing, y’know. Can I come in?” As there was no response aside from a lingering silence, she rapped her knuckles again. Sighing, she slipped open the door, and stopped short. Coulson was sitting with his back against the wall, tactfully covering his carvings from the night before. He was wearing glasses and a t-shirt, with papers spread out around him and a disgusting amount of crumped tissues scattered across the bed and floor. He looked up in surprised annoyance as Skye stood, taking in his red nose and tired eyes with her mouth gaping slightly. 

“Oh my god. Are you _sick _?”__

 _ _“I asked May to keep you kids away from me.” He grumbled, only slightly ironically, while trying without much expended effort to clean up his surroundings a little. His consonants had lost their definition due to congestion, making his m’s sound more like b’s, and he took off his glasses to rub his eyes before looking up at Skye and sighing, waiting for her to talk.__

 _ _

“I, uh, I’ll just come back when you’re feeling b…“ Her sentence was interrupted as he turned away suddenly, burying his nose in his elbow and sneezing twice, loudly. “…better.” She finished hurriedly and practically ran away, leaving Coulson sitting alone and embarrassed. 

\---- 

“He’s sick?” Triplett responded in mild disbelief as a Skye stood nodding dramatically. “That has never happened before.” 

“Yeah. And not only is he hiding, but he tasked May with keeping us away from him.” 

“Sheesh. That man.” Triplett laughed. “Hey, I think your data base found a few matches.” He nodded towards the screen, where the base of thousands had narrowed down to twenty. 

Skye barley glanced at her laptop, slightly annoyed that Triplett didn’t find this development as interesting as she did. She pretended to work for a few minutes, and then wandered off in search of someone who would share her curiosity. 

\---- 

Down in the laboratory, Skye found Fitz and Simmons. Simmons was pouring intensely over a microscope and Fitz was tinkering at something at a different lab table. The two weren’t talking, and Skye cleared her throat awkwardly to clear the silence that their weeks apart had created. They both looked up, Simmons removing her goggles and smiling warmly. 

“Hello, Skye! I was actually just going to come looking for you; Have you seen Coulson? I haven’t seen him yet today and I really want his opinion on what this data implies, because we’ve never really encountered anything like it and Fitz and I aren’t exactly sure what path we should be taking with the…“ 

Skye cut off Simmons before she launched into a full on lab report right in front of her. “Yeah, actually. He’s sick.” 

Simmons looked shocked. “Really? What’s wrong with him?” 

“As far as I could tell just a cold, but he’s officially been hiding in his sleeping quarters all day.” 

“Oh my god, that’s adorable.” Responded Simmons. 

Skye made a face. “Ugh, What?” 

“Oh, come on, right?” She looked over at Fitz, who looked up, nodded uncomfortably at Simmons, and looked by down. “He’s trying to hide so we don’t find out he’s sick. That’s sweet.” 

“Yeah, I mean kind of, but…” 

Now it was Simmons’s turn to interrupt. “We have to do something nice for him! He’s been working so hard and doing so much for us,” She trailed off slowly, as she realized that Skye had raised her eyebrows and Fitz was once again completely absorbed in his work. “Come on guys, don’t you think so? Fitz?” 

He looked up, slightly distracted. “Oh, no, yeah. I agree. We should definitely do something nice for him.” 

Simmons smiled at him and then turned to Skye, eyes hopeful. 

Skye sighed and dropped her arms. “Oh, alright. What do you have in mind?” 

\---- 

Coulson was miserable. It seemed to him like it has been years since he had felt this sick, and he had given up trying to do any sort of work over two hours ago. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling feeling all sorts of bad for himself. He ran over his symptoms in his head. Nausea. Headache. Congestion. Sore throat. Cough. Fever. Yeah, he definitely had the flu, at least. And, because all of that wasn’t enough he had all of this S.H.E.I.L.D. verses Hydra shit he was supposed to be dealing with. He lifted his arm and draped it halfheartedly across his face in order to cover the sneeze that somehow propelled him into a sitting position. He groaned and leaned against the wall, scrubbing his face with his hands before grabbing a tissue, blowing his nose and throwing the tissue in the vague direction of the garbage can. He wanted nothing more than to sleep this off, but he was too miserable to even come close. Just as was beginning to consider going down to the lab and requesting the strongest tranquilizer Simmons had, there was a light knock on the door. 

“Coulson? May we come in?” 

“Simmons?” Coulson answered, wondering if she had somehow read his mind. 

“Yes. And Fitz, and Skye.” 

Skye. She must have told them that he was sick, and now they were going to see him in his disgusting and weekend state as well as risk catching the virus and wasting time. “Sure, come on in.” Oh well, what’s the use. 

The door slid open to reveal the three agents, Simmons in the middle holding a bowl. “Hi! Skye told us you weren’t feeling well, so we made soup, and brought you some tea.” 

Coulson couldn’t help but to smile through his misery, struggling to think of a response. “You guys…” he trailed off 

Simmons looked around the room, taking in the mess and the discomfort obvious on her superior’s face, but knowing that her mothering would be unwelcome. She set the bowl down on the bedside table. “Can we get you anything else? More blankets? Or… tissues?” 

“No, I’m fine. This is great. Thank you.” 

“And you don’t just have to stay in your room.” Fitz chimed in. “It’s totally fine if you would be more comfortable in the lounge. You’re probably not even that…” He trailed off, staring into the distance, and bring his fidgeting hand to his face, searching for the word he wanted. 

“Contagious.” Skye said and Fitz nodded at her. 

“I’m alright here. Trust me, you don’t want to be around me right now,” Coulson chuckled, then started coughing, which drowned out the chorus of ‘of course not’s’ that followed that statement. The three look concerned by the time the fit had passed, and Coulson was left with his head pounding and his nose running. He found himself, though appreciative, wishing they would just leave him alone. 

“Alright, so… we’ll see you later.” Said Skye. 

“Yeah… feel better!” Fitz peeked from around the girls. 

“If you need anything else, feel free to ask any of us.” Simmons nodded earnestly. Coulson smiled weakly. The three left, closing the door behind them. He hadn’t thrown up since the night before, and hadn’t eaten for a while, and the salty smell of the hot meal called him closer. He picked up the spoon and smiled at the kindness of his ramshackle team. Being the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. would have to wait, at least for a while.

__


End file.
